Kang Quintos Films presents A Kang Quintos Production, Enha Johenscott Films, Kong Quintus (Solomon), Faith Fidel (Ekah), Cosson Chinepah (Lucas), Ramsey Nouah (Anang Joe), Ndamo Damaris (Teacher Biblh), Neba Goodwill Awanta (Sule), Onyama Laura (Babara), Prince Subo (Mustaffa). Director of Photography, Rene Etta; Producer, Kong Quintus; Director/ Writer, Enha Johnscott. © 2020
This is a not-so-friendly tale of two brothers never seen in Nollywood pictures since The Burial of Kojo and equal only to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. The Burial of Kojo is darker though. There’s a tribe, a cultural setup, sort of. Must be the Cameroonian Creole Kamtok speaking fishermen. It is a tribe that does not allow girls to go to school (Hausas in Up North) and could be legally married at the tender age of twelve. Solomon (Kong Quintus) is afraid to let his only daughter, go to school. “Education is for lazy people, ” he sums up his belief: “Education is bad for women.” Lucas would later say. Ekah (Faith Fidel), is his only daughter and the daughter of Babara (Onyama Laura). She’s dead now. Solomon had sponsored Babara through school but came home to school him, with her lips pouted at me, ”It’s not “trousa,” it is “trouser.” Why, is it so difficult for you to understand simple teachings?”
Solomon to Ekah, You asked me the other time if I loved your mama…I never ever loved my skin. Every love and care I had…I gave it to your mother. My mama and brother Lucas tried to say anything wrong about her; I kicked my mother out of the house. Nobody loves your mother more than me. The Devil took over her and started talking to me like a madwoman. One day, she told me that her fiance has “accepted to pay every dime, even with interest all the money you’ve spent on me.” Is this what education does? I asked your mother. Your mama called our house “a mental prison” and doesn’t want her daughter to suffocate there. (Turns to Ekah, in bed, her tears running; she faces away from the camera) I will die first…It would not happen.
Solomon has not got over the pains he suffers over Babara. It is like when one gets robbed out of life investment. Ekah is the only price left for him to show for the loss. This is why he won’t let her go to school. Yet, Ekah is resolute, determined to be somebody. Oh yeah, she got lashings on her bareback many times for the love of learning but never stopped seeking. You can see her stealing into the classroom at night and trying to read what the teacher left on the board. Ekah had discovered a flyer on the celebrity kid girl from Pakistan, Malala, and believes she can emulate her philosophy. She becomes her idol. Ekah wants to break the norm in the fishing community, where no girlchild must attend school. Her uncle Lucas engineered her demise: When the teacher comes to talk to Solomon about Ekah going to school:
Lucas, “Brother, why do bad luck always choose your house, again and again? Before it was Barbara, now it’s Ekah. Why?”
Solomon, “My Ekah, go to school? My Ekah?”
Why don’t parents let their children pursue what appeals to them? Yes, their dreams. I love the way The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind (2019) got his way. Mine was rebuffed by taking twenty-four lashes on my bareback in front of the entire school at morning devotion. My parents were called to attention, and they were witnesses. I wonder if I have told this tale before. I was good in school at sketching, drawing, and that kind of graphic’ stuff. I drew a picture of a man and woman dancing on those movable blackboards that rested on easels, you remember? And wrote underneath, ‘They Are Dancing.’ Some good friend of mine, saying so with sarcasm, turned the board on its side and left the caption, ‘They Are F**k**g.’ The punishment foiled my dream as an artist, because every time I held a pencil to draw, I’d think of that morning devotion. And you can markup that incident as the first criticism of my artistic ambition.
There’s an important plot relating to the school system. The Head Teacher of the donor-sponsored school for fishermen’s children, Mr. Anang Joe (Ramsey Nouah), has an upcoming contest. And the fishermen’s children at the school must show improvement in Arithmetics, spelling, and other IQ questions. Teacher Biblh (Ndamo Damaris) doesn’t have confidence in her pupils. Ekah has been taking closet classes under her and has come to believe in the little girl’s talent and desire to learn but won’t convince the Head Teacher to put Ekah in the contest without parental consent. Morally right, that parental consent. But what about Ekah’s right first, as a child, secondly, her right as a human?
Lucas, Ekah’s uncle, mortgaged the little girl into marriage to the village crook, Sule (Goodwill Awanta), who rapes her incessantly. Until we catch her putting a rope on her neck to get over the misery. Like I said, out of reverence for his mother, not once Solomon calls his daughter by name, ‘Ekah,’ but “Little-Mother.” Father and daughter are too bonded together. She takes off his working shoes when he comes home after work, just how Babara would have done; they eat together and even sleep in the same room, same bed. Why could he then give her away in marriage and not school, even when Ekah had promised him at the ‘delicious fish dinner’ they had together, that she will take care of her father? In a solemn moment, he whispers back: “You will not be a slave in any man’s house.” But his brother Lucas (Judas?) overpowers him by intrigue.
I think I’ll take a break here to discuss character motivations in the Fisherman’s Diary. To start with, Solomon and his daughter form the centerpiece of this story. All forces gravitate towards them. Mr. Anang has to do better by winning the competition. He has the chance of losing donor money and assistance. That is his most worries; teacher Bihl is in a tango to keep her underground teaching private and unrelentingly pressures the Head Teacher to enroll Ekah. “No, I don’t want to alienate the community.” Anang groans at his teacher, Biblh. Lucas owes Sule a bunch of money; he’s under constant threat of being butchered, with the dagger Sule always wields in his face every time they met. Not funny. Sule hauls the child to his house and deflowers her. Lucas’ connivance is fait accompli.
There’s a moment of truth in this film. In the scene when Solomon and Ekah, sitting at the tea table, and finds that Ekah is off-color. When asked, she stuttered to her father, “Dad, I want to go to school.” Solomon goes into a flashback: The scene when he and Babara discuss the family’s future, and Babara had expressed a desire to go to school (beautiful lighting). “Fishing is for young people. What will happen when we got old and couldn’t go fishing? God bless us with one kid, and it’s a girl.” “School is not for fishing people like we.” He growled. “Solo, they say a blind person cannot lead another.” “What God blesses us with is fishing.” “I disagree with that,” Babara said. Now he faces the same scenario all over again with his daughter. “School is not for fish people like we. And you being a woman.”
Like they say, “all’s well that ends well.” The story ends on a beautiful note. Fisherman’s Diary’s emotional aspect goes into the dark chambers of our minds when she thus overcomes the struggle in the end. Few viewers like myself don’t want to see such inhuman treatments, especially the lashing scenes. Ekah receives a beating on her bareback from her father numerous times. See her on a man’s shoulder. The disgraceful way they carry the bride to her husband is comparable to the Pakistani persecution of young Women’s Rights leader, Malala Yousafzai.
I got lost in transit somewhere, in viewing this melodrama, though. Did I miss anything? We see Ekah putting her head in the string to hang herself (Suicide). Next, we see a girl in haste from the preceding location (rope around Ekah’s neck scene), navigating tight corners in the village. Is she coming to report on the tragedy she witnessed? We catch up with her in the crowd watching the broadcast of the competition on live tv. And Ekah is a contestant against a boy. Ekah wins. I expected tragic news, but I heaved a sigh, knowing she didn’t kill herself. That’s what melodramas do. They play with our emotions.
I’ve never seen Nouah smoke that much in films as in Fisherman’s Diary. The village community life robs on him: facial beard; not with his usual swank self but haggard. It’s like he stepped on the set with something heavy on his mind. If it is part of the wardrobe, it suits him well. Fisherman’s Diary with its dancing tune and lyric, Ayo Ayo Ayo Ayaga yagayo is memorable. This story tells the documented (diary) life of an average fisherman. It is about a man whose struggle with the past stands in the way of the future. Drama, dramatic art, shouldn’t be preachy but conversational. Not a long conversation, though. Short. Slangy. Dialogue breeds conflict, and conflict comes in with tension. Voila! We viewers love that. It is all here in this Fisherman’s Diary.
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” Malala Yousafzai.